1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to a technique for wear mitigation in a pipeline; and more particularly to a method and apparatus for re-lining a slurry transport pipeline for wear mitigation.
2. Description of Related Art
To overcome the significant wear that can occur in pipelines carrying slurry materials, particularly as in the mineable oil sands industry, many producers are adopting ‘lined’ carbon steel pipes in the most aggressive slurries, for example coarse tailings. These steel pipes are lined with materials such as urethane with other elastomers. For example, one known lined pipe, such as Iracore International's Irathane® lined pipe, combines a thin layer of rubber against the inside wall of the pipe, for compliance, with a thicker layer of urethane-like material (Irathane®) over the rubber liner. While these materials provide good resistance to abrasion, and have projected lifetimes of 10 years, ultrasonic non-destructive examination (NDE) approaches to detecting the lining wear (wall thickness) may be compromised, and in some cases are not possible, due to the poor impedance discrimination between the steel and various liners (as compared to pipes having just steel). Consequently, monitoring the wear rates and status of a lined pipe is both a challenge and a risk to the producer, as catastrophic failure can occur, e.g., if the liner wears to the point of reaching the carbon steel pipe, or if the liner is damaged and tears away from the outer steel pipe, exposing it directly to the abrasive slurry. This type of failure can result in loss of containment which could have environmental and safety implications as well as introducing high opportunity costs due to lost production
In view of this, there is a need in the industry to provide a technique for re-lining a pipeline, e.g., including a technique that does not preclude ultrasonic non-destructive examination (NDE) approaches for detecting the lining wear (wall thickness) to be implemented after the pipeline is re-lined as part of a routine maintenance schedule, which is a problem with liners known and used in the prior art.